Thursday, July 27, 2017

The Universalist Story is Not a Realistic Story (Annihilationism vs. Universalism)

This post can be read on its own, but it also is the
second in a series on What’s
Wrong with the Universalist Story. In the first post, I showed that the
Universalist story goes wrong because it has the wrong ultimate goal. In this
post, I seek to explain how and why the Universalist story in not realistic.

Redemption plays an important part in many of the stories
we love. Take the Star Wars saga for example. Darth Vader is saved in the end
and turns back to the light.That
resonates with us because redemption is a part of the true story, God’s story,
that we are all a part of.But what if
not only Darth Vader, but the evil Emperor, and every storm trooper, and all
the other bad guys, turned good at the end.The movie would have flopped! It’s not realistic.

But is universal redemption not being realistic just our
human opinion and feelings, or is there a Biblical basis for thinking that a
story where every single person is redeemed in the end does not align with
reality? The Bible confirms our intuition that not everyone will be redeemed.

The Bible shows
that some people will rebel against God no matter how much revelation He gives
them.

The Bible reveals that some will choose rebellion against
God no matter what.Here are some
examples:

* In Moses’ day, the Israelites saw numerous amazing
signs and wonders in Egypt and in the wilderness.Huge, public miracles were a regular part of
their lives.But most of them still
rebelled and died in the desert.

* When Jesus walked the earth, He did many astounding
miracles in public. Dead coming back to life, blind people seeing, people
crippled from birth dancing, and more, were all seen by many. He preached and
practiced love and mercy.Many repented
and followed Him.But others, seeing the
same miracles, plotted to kill Jesus.

* In Revelation we read about the thousand year
reign.However you interpret it, in the
vision John sees the devil is locked away during this thousand years.Jesus reigns over the earth with justice and
blessings for all.Yet, even after a
thousand years of this glorious reign of Christ, huge numbers of people choose
to rebel against Jesus when the thousand years are up.

* More amazing still, Adam and Eve started off in a
perfect paradise.The devil could lie to
them, but there is no evidence he could harm them.They chose to listen to the serpent and
disobey God.

* Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the devil
started off as a good angel living in a perfect Heaven in the bright light of
God’s truth and love.Without any source
of evil in his world, the devil chose to rebel.He took many of the angels with him.

The point is simply this:in the Bible’s grand story, we see time and time again that some of
God’s creatures will choose to rebel against Him if they are allowed to.This rebellion has brought massive suffering
and loss to this current earth.And if
these people were allowed to live in the New Earth, there is no reason to
believe they would not ruin it as well.

The Universalist responds to all this by suggesting that
if they were given enough time, everyone would eventually repent and accept God’s
grace. In this sense, Universalists are a bit like those who believe in
unguided evolution.They hope that a lot
of time can make something happen that usually doesn’t happen. But based on
biblical principles, we can see why more time, even eternal time, will not help
the unrighteous come to God. In fact, more time only makes things worse.

The Bible teaches
that over time sinners get worse, their minds become darker, and their hearts
become harder.

The Universalist imagines a situation where God patiently
continues working with the unrighteous for however long it takes for them to be
saved.Some Universalists specifically
imagine this happening after the unrighteous have died and been consigned to
the lake of fire.But does the Bible
indicate that God will put up with and contend with the unrighteous for however
long it takes?Actually, no.

NIV Genesis 6:3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are
mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years."

Genesis chapter 5 reports people living for seven, eight, and even nine
hundred years. God, in His perfect wisdom and righteousness, decided that was
too long a time for Him to work with people, so He announced that our life
spans would be reduced to a hundred and twenty years.This does not fit very well with the
Universalist narrative.

But why would God do that? I’m sure it’s not due to any defect or lack on
God’s part.I think a more likely
explanation is that waiting longer than about 120 years for someone to respond
to God in the right way is not effective.God designed us so that the decisions we make not only change the
environment around us, but also change our hearts and our minds.This good design enables us to learn and grow
in Christ when we are following God.However, when people sin, their thinking becomes increasingly futile and
their hearts become increasingly hard.

Romans 1:21 For although they knew
God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools

Those who do evil tend to get worse, not better, over
time:

NIV 2 Timothy 3:12 In fact, everyone
who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,

13 while evildoers and impostors will
go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

It may very well be that God limited his efforts to win
people to 120 years because by that point (and for many people, sooner) they
have become so foolish, hardened, and deceived that there is no hope of their
freely choosing to love Him.They have
become fools as described in Proverbs:

NIV Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

NIV Proverbs 13:19 A longing fulfilled is sweet to the soul, but
fools detest turning from evil.

NIV Proverbs 27:22 Though you grind a fool in a mortar, grinding
them like grain with a pestle, you will not remove their folly from them.

It’s not that God has stopped loving them.It’s just that they reach a point where they despise instruction, detest
turning from evil, and resist all efforts to remove evil from them so strongly
that they can no longer be saved.Of
course, God could override their wills, but if He wants them to love Him freely
then that option is off the table.The
kindest thing He can do for them is to utterly destroy them.Allowing them to live on in misery and
darkness is unthinkable.

This would certainly explain why God assigned a mighty angel to guard the
tree of life after expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.Giving sinners many thousands of years of
life, or worse, eternal life, would only result in greater misery.

In this post I have tried to explain why the Universalist idea that
everyone could be saved if they were given a combination of the right evidence
and enough time is unrealistic.Being
unrealistic is only one of many problems which plague the Universalist
metanarrative.A more fundamental
problem is that the unsaved cannot repent in Hell, because in Hell they perish,
die, are destroyed in body and soul, and are burned to ashes.Lord willing, I’ll discuss this more in
another post.

Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .

7 comments:

Excellent article!Also in Rom.1:28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. (God knows our heart, He knows if we love Him or not, if we love Him, we will only want to do those things that are pleasing to Him).

Thanks for you encouragement, Dee. And yes, Romans 1:28 does add additional evidence that more time will not help those who have hardened their hearts against God after a certain point. This motivates all of us to feel an urgency to take risks, make sacrifices, and work hard to share God's love and truth with people before it is too late!

I think you're going to find yourself in a pickle of incoherence with this kind of thinking. Everyone is totally stuck and totally hardened unless God steps in and removes the barrier of sin by his Grace. God is the author and finisher of all faith. God did this with you. God did this with me. God can do this with anyone. God's arm is never too short to rescue, the only barrier is sin, and God is always capable of removing that sin. No will is more stubborn than God is powerful and able.

These yield very simple Biblical syllogisms and they don't "work" with what you're saying. All Biblical phrases about being cut off and sliced away are subordinate to the new eschatology that rides along with Christ's conquest of death itself. A very simple arithmetic exercise is to read Ezekiel 18:23-24 and the add Christ's conquest of death itself.

It's important to avoid "Jonah's error." Jonah was awful, rebellious, and impotent to save himself. But he was redeemed by the Grace of God (reminder: You were awful, rebellious, and impotent to save yourself, but you were redeemed by the Grace of God). Jonah then adopted an entitled attitude that a number of other folks were awful, rebellious, impotent to save themselves... *and thus should be beyond redemption.* Jonah's amnesiatic self-righteousness made him conceited and vindictive, an attitude against which Romans chs. 11 and 12 were written.

Romans 11:23

"And if they [those who fell] do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again."

Romans 14:10-11

"As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me, and every tongue will fully confess to God."

Stan, I think that you are arguing for something like a Calvinistic Universalism. Is that right? (I'm honestly trying to see if I understand what you're saying.)

One of the reasons I do not believe that the Bible teaches such a view is that Jesus told us that many will in fact end up experiencing destruction:

Matthew 7: 13 "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

I advocate for purgatorial (near-)universalism, where only some will be saved from God's wrath (Romans 5:9) which is destructive and "lossy" (Luke 9:25) but destroys incisively as a salt-fire (Mark 9:48-50). This comports with the primarily purgatorial view of Gehenna held by the Pharisaic Jews, and is the kind of universalism we find among early Christians (that is, we find purgatorial hell belief in the patristics alongside, or in "friendly contest" with, as Augustine might say, beliefs in endless hell and obliterating hell). Under purgatorialism the "life" is not strict perpetuity, but rather the Messianic Age-Life of knowing God through Christ, defined euphemistically in John 17:3 (and used that way in 1 John). Meanwhile, perpetuity is a byproduct of the conquest of death itself (and the return of the Tree of Life). At this time I am not asserting these things but am merely describing them, forgive me if it comes across too assertive.

(I have a strong view of sovereignty but that shouldn't be germane here -- there's no conflict between purgatorial universalism and any view of free will. I am not a Calvinist and find fault with some of their affirmations.)

A major challenge for your view is that it requires defining words the Bible uses to mean things other than the normal, simple meaning of those words. Conditional Immortality and Annihilationism view "death" as meaning "death" in the simple way that people all over the world understand "death". Even children have seen dead bugs and dead animals. Thus, God's warning of death is illustrated all around us. We also believe "perish" means "perish", and we believe that images such as being burned to ashes may very well be 100% literal, or at the very least are an apt image for what will happen.

This isn't really a major challenge because the eschatological senses of terms were not treated as straightforward under Pharisaic Judaism. Annihilation only appears obvious if it is taken for granted that these terms 'ought' to be taken in a straightforward way, and this is a heuristic assumption, nothing more. The impasses between purgatorialism and annihilationism boil down to heuristics and methodology that each camp brings to the table, and there's no "objective referee" saying one set of heuristics/methodology is 'better' than the other.